Syncing Hardware

[Supekutoru]

Hi. im running an xbase 09, juno 106, evolver, and a machinedrum all through live 6. i would usually have the xbase, evolver and machinedrum programmed on their internal sequencers with the juno being controlled by midi from ableton. the problem is when i have everything running all together (which is the most fun!) everything slips out of time, competely ruining the creative flow. the xbase seems to be the worst for this. even when im recording it in on its own after about 4 bars its completely out of time. should this be happening? i just want to be able to press record and jam away! also, i have an edirol fa 101 which everything goes through. when i record in there is always a slight delay. so if im, say recording in a bass line from the juno over a loop in ableton, it wont be in sync until after i've recorded and gone into the wave and fixed it...should this happen? i love using hardware but this is giving me a headache!

any help at all is much much appreciated

cheers

[kritikon]

You'll never get any 2 pieces of h/w with their own internal clocks to sync up. Just a fact of life I'm afraid. So you'll need to use your PC as the master clock from Ableton. There'll be some setting somewhere in each of your midi units to get them to sync to an external clock - they'll all either sync up to midi clock, MTC or something. And any decent host nowadays will output all kinds of sync info.

EDIT: you don't have to make your PC the master - you could use one of your h/w units as master and slave the other units and the PC to it...but it generally makes sense to use your PC as the master. Especially if you're going to use any audio renders from within the PC.

Can't help you with the Edirol - don't know anything about it, sorry.

[Supekutoru]

You'll never get any 2 pieces of h/w with their own internal clocks to sync up. Just a fact of life I'm afraid. So you'll need to use your PC as the master clock from Ableton. There'll be some setting somewhere in each of your midi units to get them to sync to an external clock - they'll all either sync up to midi clock, MTC or something. And any decent host nowadays will output all kinds of sync info.

EDIT: you don't have to make your PC the master - you could use one of your h/w units as master and slave the other units and the PC to it...but it generally makes sense to use your PC as the master. Especially if you're going to use any audio renders from within the PC.

Can't help you with the Edirol - don't know anything about it, sorry.

Ok thanks a lot. ill do some experimenting and hopefully get it all working. looks like i need some more midi cables!

[adventurepants]

there are issues to do with Live and midi sync with hardware, and some workarounds. dig around at the ableton forum for more info.